Rory Gilmore personality type: INFJ

Rory Gilmore makes a pro and con list for almost everything, from Harvard versus Yale to whether a boy is worth the trouble. Then she often ignores the list and follows her gut. That habit says more about her than any grade point average.

She is an INFJ, and the lead function, introverted intuition, is a long-range planner. Since childhood she has pictured one future: a great college, then the world as a foreign correspondent in the mold of Christiane Amanpour. Extraverted feeling keeps her polite, likable and tuned to what others expect, which is why teachers, grandparents and the whole town of Stars Hollow adore her. Introverted thinking writes those lists.

Underneath sits a Nine with a One wing, and Nines buy peace by going quiet and going along. She lets her grandparents steer her social life. After she sleeps with a married Dean, she spends the summer in Europe with Emily rather than talk it out with her mother.

In the revival she drifts through two years with a man named Paul, so forgettable that her family keeps forgetting him, until he ends it by text. The One wing is the good girl: homework done early, guilt after every broken rule, a deep need to be the responsible one.

The plan is also her weak spot. When Mitchum Huntzberger tells her she does not have what it takes to be a journalist, the whole careful structure collapses overnight. She steals a yacht with Logan, gets arrested, drops out of Yale and moves into her grandparents’ pool house. That is inferior extraverted sensing, the impulse INFJs keep buried, grabbing the wheel.

Rory grows by learning that the plan is not the person. Jess, of all people, asks her what she is doing with her life, and she goes back to Yale. At the end of season seven she turns down Logan’s proposal and leaves to cover a presidential campaign. For once she picks the uncertain road on purpose.

But: the ISFJ case is strong, and I nearly went with it. She rereads favorite books, loves traditions and clings to the past. Still, her loyalty is to a picture of who she will become, more than to how things have always been, and that future focus is classic introverted intuition.